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Saturday, July 29, 2017

`What Can Be Called Evasion?'

“You
gotta take sides. There is no neutral.”

So
I have been instructed by an anonymous reader. He/she (I suspect he) means
politics, of course, the most contagious and treatment-resistant pathogen. The
eight words cited recall Eldridge Cleaver’s much-quoted bid to impose a binary
scheme on the human race. Such thinkers detest our errant sloppiness and resistance
to simplified classifications. Politics is the disease that tells you you don’t
have a disease. I’m with Michael
Oakeshott as he writes in Notebooks,
1922-86 (Imprint Academic, 2014):

“A
general interest & preoccupation with politics is the surest sign of a
general decay in a society. A universal preoccupation with rights, interests,
affairs of government, political questions in general is fatal to the public
peace & individual happiness.”

Even
better, because less explicit, is a poem by Dick Davis, “Going Home” (Touchwood, Anvil Press, 1996):

“What
can be called evasion?

Is
it to go away?

Or
to ignore the world

And
like a limpet stay

“Stuck
to the self-same rock?

Whichever
you decide

--Resistance
to the waves,

Surrender
to the tide—

“What
you will not evade

Is
doubt accusing you

Of
infinite evasion

In
all you say and do.”

As
an old friend once told me after I finished eviscerating some fool: “It's OK. He’s just
a human.”